Rather than encouraging customers to share their views about the company and its products with managers, the authors found, companies tend to focus on encouraging customers to take part in spreading positive word of mouth. Yet word of mouth is only one type of voluntary behavior that customers engage in. Moreover, it indicates only what people on the outside are saying, not how companies can improve their offerings or what customers may be looking for. The authors, who conducted surveys of customers as well as interviews and roundtable discussions with senior executives in a variety of industries, found that both customer word of mouth and customer- to-business interactions are associated with a customer's propensity to buy more of a company's products and services. While not all satisfied customers become repeat buyers, encouraging them to provide feedback and suggestions helps tie them more closely to the business. Companies can even recapture defecting customers simply by contacting them and encouraging them to participate. In addition, customer-to-business interaction is often more malleable than customer-to-customer word of mouth and more readily within the control of management. In a study of customers of a global bank, the authors found that customers who purchased the most were individuals who participated and engaged in much word-of-mouth behavior. High participation/ high word-of-mouth customers were the most loyal and attached to the brand; customers who did not participate tended to be the least valuable, the least loyal and the least attached to the organization regardless of whether they spread positive word of mouth.

What makes such partnerships -which the author calls adaptive strategic partnerships -counterintuitive is that they are being used in situations where the two most relevant streams of organizational economics would argue for vertical integration. One company that has pursued adaptive strategic partnerships is Bharti Airtel Ltd., the Indian telecommunications services company. Back in 2004, Bharti Airtel's managers found that negotiating and updating contracts with vendors interfered with their ability to focus on satisfying the company's customers and outsmarting its competition. Contrary to what other telecom operators have done, it negotiated unconventional relationships with some of its leading vendors, including Nokia Siemens Networks (now Nokia Solutions and Networks), Ericsson and IBM. Instead of expanding network infrastructure by purchasing increasing amounts of equipment (such as exchanges and cellular antennas), which often results in unused capacity, Bharti Airtel pays the vendors to operate the network; it compensates them based on telecom volume, paying only when equipment is in use. In addition to rethinking its approach to network capacity, vendors take responsibility for network performance and troubleshooting. Typically, companies with outside partners rely on simple tools such as service-level agreements, which specify what is expected from each party and provide for performance standards to assess compliance. But in managing its partnerships with vendors, Bharti Airtel uses a joint governing structure that encourages people at different levels of the organizations to communicate and address problems as they arise. In some cases, such interactions have led the company and its partners to redraw the scope of their collaborations (for example, assign responsibility for building and maintaining the cell towers to a new company), something that would be more difficult to do in a more traditional partnership.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Ethnography has often been portrayed as a "fly on the wall"technique, with anthropologists lurking in people's homes to observe consumers'unadulterated lives. The authors argue that this description does not do justice to the way ethnography actually works in the corporate world or to ethnography's increasingly important role in formulating business strategy. The authors'research across a variety of companies suggests that ethnography -artful in situ investigation into what customers do and feel and how they talk about what they do and feel -is a powerful tool to use to gain insights into your market. To arrive at a more in-depth understanding of how corporations use ethnography to their advantage, the authors conducted interviews with executives in various industries worldwide, including Ford and Wells Fargo. Where data analytics and surveys provide flattened snapshots, ethnography contributes an empathic understanding of how consumers live, work and play through gritty and detailed descriptions. Whether conveyed in video format, presentations or reports, these stories describe how people confront and surmount the hurdles they encounter in meeting their responsibilities and fulfilling their hopes in our globalized consumer culture. By delving into the richness of people's life stories, ethnographic research can pivot companies away from less meaningful segmentation parameters, such as demographics or purchase history, and toward those that drive behavior, such as purpose and intent. Quantitative techniques such as factor analysis can subsequently be applied to locate and size market segments.

For the most part, consumers have faith in online ratings and view them as trustworthy. But, the author argues, this trust may be misplaced. The heart of the problem lies with our herd instincts -natural human impulses characterized by a lack of individual decision making -that cause us to think and act in the same way as other people around us. When it comes to online ratings, our herd instincts combine with our susceptibility to positive "social influence."When we see that other people have appreciated a certain book, enjoyed a hotel or restaurant or liked a particular doctor, this can cause us to feel the same positive feelings and to provide a similarly high online rating. The author describes an experiment that he and two colleagues conducted on a social news-aggregation website. On the site, users rate news articles and comments by voting them up or down based on how much they enjoyed them. The researchers randomly manipulated the scores of comments with a single up or down vote and then measured the impact of these small manipulations on subsequent scores. The results were striking. The positive manipulations created a positive social influence bias that persisted over five months and that ultimately increased the comments'final ratings by 25%. Negatively manipulated scores, meanwhile, were offset by a correction effect that neutralized the manipulation: Although viewers of negatively manipulated comments were more likely to vote negative (evidence of negative herding), they were even more likely to positively "correct"what they saw as an undeserved negative score.

As these examples illustrate, MSPs include some of the largest and fastest-growing businesses of the past decade. Why? Successful MSPs create enormous value by reducing search costs or transaction costs (or both) for participants. As a result, MSPs often occupy privileged positions in their respective industries; most other industry participants revolve around and depend on MSPs in important ways. This article begins with a description of how MSPs work and why they can erect such high barriers to entry for new participants. It then offers an analysis of four fundamental strategic decisions and associated trade-offs that set MSPs apart from other types of businesses and that every MSP entrepreneur and investor should carefully consider. These challenges are as follows: •the number of sides to bring on (deciding whether to bring on two or more); •design (ensuring the interests of the different platform sides are not in conflict with each other or the MSP); •pricing structures (determining which platform side or sides should be charged more, based on the groups'relative value from interacting with each other); and •governance rules (regulating the participation and activities undertaken by the various platform sides to ensure a high level of quality, or outsourcing that function to users through ratings systems).

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. A study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting finds that companies now face a digital imperative: adopt new technologies effectively or face competitive obsolescence. While there is consensus on the importance of adopting digital technology, most employees find the process complex and slow. Many say their leaders lack urgency and fail to share a vision for how technology can change the business. Companies that succeed tend to have leaders who share their vision and define a road map, create cross-organizational authority for adoption and reward employees for working towards it.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In this 2013 report, new research by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group looks at companies that "walk the talk"in addressing significant sustainability concerns. So-called "Walkers"focus heavily on five fronts: sustainability strategy, business case, measurement, business model innovation and leadership commitment. For them, addressing significant sustainability issues has become a core strategic imperative and a way to mitigate threats and identify new opportunities.

Peter Drucker once said that the most effective executives disregard conventional wisdom about reaching consensus and instead work to create disagreement and dissention. As Drucker hints, opposing models are only a problem if we choose to treat them as such. The authors describe the four phases of Integrative Thinking, an approach to model creation developed at the Rotman School of Management that has evolved through research and practice. Even once you reach your 'integrative solution', the authors note that the challenge isn't over: all solutions will eventually be made obsolete, and as a result, integrative thinkers treat their solutions as 'provisional': as new information emerges in opposition to the 'solution', the process begins anew. However, when applied thoughtfully, they show that integrative thinking can give executives a fighting chance at tackling the wicked problems they face.

When most people think of the word, 'creativity', their mind immediately leaps to artistic endeavours like sculpture, drawing or music. You may believe that architects and designers are paid to be creative, but CEOs, lawyers and doctors are not. The authors-brothers who have worked for 30 years at the forefront of innovation at IDEO-call this misconception 'the creativity myth.' They describe two strategies (there are six more in their latest book) to help you get from 'blank page' to insight, and show that by embracing this challenge yourself, you will influence those around you to do the same. The article is excerpted from Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All (Crown Business, 2013) by Tom Kelley and David Kelley.

Have you been 'nudged' recently, to behave in a more environmentally or economically-sustainable way? While you might not know it, chances are, you have. A nudge is any aspect of the 'choice architecture' that alters people's behaviour in a predictable way, without removing any options or changing economic consequences. The authors complement the existing literature on Nudging-based on seminal research by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein-by providing practitioners with several guidelines for developing nudges of their own. They describe 12 possible types of nudges-a 'taxonomy' of nudging-and show that developing nudges is an interdisciplinary process that is project-based and experimental in nature. As they indicate, nudging is a powerful approach that is now being applied effectively in both for-profit and individual welfare domains.

In an excerpt from their book, Thinking in New Boxes: A New Paradigm for Business Creativity (Random House, 2013), the authors describe the power of embracing doubt to move beyond the status quo to value-added solutions. Both leaders at the Boston Consulting Group, they describe a process for innovation that begins with questioning your 'boxes'-the mental models you are currently operating with. In the end, they show that embracing doubt is a critical element of a new paradigm for creativity that recognizes that no idea is good forever. In the end, surviving success can be just as challenging as succeeding in the first place.

No matter what your circumstances or goals, the authors assure us of one thing: we will be better off if we are skilled thinkers. Critical thinking, they say, is the disciplined art of ensuring that you use the best thinking you are capable of in any set of circumstances; but to maximize the quality of your thinking, you have to make learning about thinking a priority. They present four recommendations which, when applied, result in a mind practicing skilled thinking. These include 'clarify your thinking' and 'question questions'. In the end, they say the best thinkers are those who understand the development of thinking as a process occurring throughout many years of practice.

Mental models-beliefs about causality and what is true-are passed down to each and every one of us through education, work and family life. Some of them seep deep into our core to become an established foundation for our thinking. The author argues that we spend too much of our lives asking finalistic questions -what is right and wrong, what is true? It is time to ask different questions, she says: knowing that truth is an elusive destination, how can we be effective? How can we build ever better models without getting overly attached - even when one seems just right? In the end, she shows that we're stuck with the incomplete mental models we learned through education and experience - unless we keep testing the models we're using and exploring alternatives.

Based on their research on information-sharing processes at 20 multinational firms from a broad range of sectors, the authors describe some of the hidden barriers to innovation. These fall under three headings, they argue: knowing what's going on in the market; understanding the market; and using market information. Along the way, they propose some practical ideas for managers to innovate more successfully.

If you spend some time studying the kinds of decisions people make and the outcomes of those decisions, you'll find that humanity does not have a particularly impressive track record. In an excerpt from their book, Decisive, the authors describe four 'villains' of good decision making, including 'narrow framing' and 'overconfidence'; then then provide a four-step model for overcoming these biases and making better decisions.

In an excerpt from his book of the same title, the author urges readers to address the problematic tendencies of a happy brain, which include many automatic reactions and biases that do little to spur effective action. Elevating our awareness of these reactions and biases, he argues, is the key to more productive behaviour. Pointing to findings from Cognitive Science and Neuroscience, he presents 15 rules of thumb gleaned from that can help us think in more productive ways.

We increasingly hear the alarm siren signaling that organizations can no longer survive - much less thrive - by continuing to use frameworks developed during the Industrial Revolution. In recent years, one framework that has emerged to illuminate how networked systems function optimally centers on ecological thinking and its application to organizations. The implication is that an 'organizational ecosystem' functions much as a biological ecosystem does, exhibiting both desirable and undesirable properties that are similar to what we see in nature. The authors discuss four meaningful similarities and four fundamental between organizational and biological ecosystems and in so doing, deconstruct this popular metaphor.

In this interview the renowned psychologist and Emotional Intelligence (EI) pioneer describes the importance of focus for leadership excellence. He explains in detail the three types of focus that leaders must possess to perform optimally: self-awareness, awareness of others and outer focus. Focus, he argues, is a pre-requisite for Emotional Intelligence.

Although systematic preparation is a key factor in negotiation success, negotiators often become ensnared in their own planning. Negotiators sometimes do not reveal what they really want, fail to discern hidden agendas, or dwell on arguments of little importance. This article proposes viewing negotiation as a paradox called structured spontaneity. It explains how three fundamental levels of awareness exist in every negotiation. Positions are what the other side claims it wants, often in the form of a simple demand; Interests may underlie these stated positions; and Perceptions reflect how the negotiating partner sees the world. Building on this, the authors propose an “improvisational iceberg” with three more levels. Head is where the discovery of the other side’s position takes place; Heart is where we invite connections between interests and keep open minds; and Core constitutes business philosophy and corporate culture. Structured spontaneity in negotiations can be taught through improvisation training. In switch games, actors play out improvised scenarios and swap roles; in wordless negotiation, participants try to convey what they want non-verbally; in monologues, negotiators tap into the Core of the other side. Ultimately, improvisational training for negotiators is about the tension between strategic preparation and willingness to follow the other side in a new direction on short notice.

This article highlights the four key interrelated areas in which brand addiction can be planned: product, rewards, price and communications. Historically, marketers have focused on more traditional, obvious benefits of products. However, reward systems such as loyalty programs are useful in increasing differentiation and encouraging consumer habituation. Intrinsic consumer rewards (e.g. personal satisfaction) stand in contrast to extrinsic rewards (e.g. point systems), but when consumers repeatedly modify their behaviours in order to, for example, achieve more points, they may convert extrinsic rewards into intrinsic ones. Firms have long used discounting and loss leaders to attract business and, in going a step further, a “free price” for a product may help to foster product addicts. Here, consumers can pay in other ways, such as through attention, referrals or feedback. Furthermore, firms are increasingly using communications strategies to support the repetition of modified purchasing behaviours. Ultimately, the key is to conceive of the four elements of planning brand addiction in new ways, starting with a meaning for the product that goes beyond the main product benefit the customer derives, and then using the communications strategy to support the repetition of modified purchasing behaviours and to bring forth a new consumer consciousness.